The Decline

I am aware all too much of my recent decline. It is not necessarily a bad thing to discover one day that you are in a steady recession. It will often inspire exciting change. I believe it comes from being too comfortable in one setting -- a sort of content humdrum that reflects in your personality or your work, as well as in your projects or your relationships. You are aware of your own potential and there are months and seasons where we keep the bar steady and shine our brightest. Inspiring others to do the same is what exhilarates the concept. Then one day, you notice that certain areas of your life have become sloppy but in repairable and tolerable ways, yet still leaving you with that next day feeling of having slept on someone’s couch. My decline started the instant I thought I had no more tasks of immediate importance. Once I had all my ducks waddling around my happy gazebo, I settled in to a slide of contentment and where I may be giving all my genuine gusto around my work and my loved ones, I am definitely not giving it my all in the areas that are supposed to make up my soul. With the home front nicely manicured, a reckless and irresponsible change of scenery is the only sensible option at this point. I will soon board a plane headed for scattered parts that include Chicago, Alabama and Nashville all in the spirit of living as the ceaseless houseguest for two weeks. With nothing in disorder and the spirit of a small town youth bound for a big city college, I am saying no to contentment, choosing to wonder once again, and live out of a suitcase among loved ones for the ushering of the New Year. Switching off the lights, locking the door and returning to a thin layer of dust over the pause placed on the contemporary. The luxury of stability almost insists on the liberty of temporary vagabond status. To shake the feeling of sleeping on someone’s couch is actually to sleep on someone’s couch. My decline reflects not just in the confession of this column, but also in the column itself. Ordinarily, I enjoy writing personally and publicly to feel what I am unable to feel when I am alone. My passion and sincerity has become my vapid practice. I find that I am clicking away, paying little attention, trying to look busy at Starbucks. It makes no sense whatsoever to be so absent from your passion when you truly have the world on a string. I am pecking away with little or no emotion, simply writing because I know I love it -- because I still have to eat. I could not be bothered to do more than run a brush through my hair and pile windbreaker layers over my plaid pajamas for the nonchalant stroll to Starbucks. Sitting at a sidewalk table with dead eyes in the approach of Christmas, I am seeing the jostling tension growing in the usually lax main street. The hostile exchanges between pedestrians and motorists, and the occasional barfly gloom among the Dean Martin Christmas classics have nothing to do with me. My inability to feel emotionally affected by the sneers of housewives dragging a couple of tiny apes in their tow reveals the dissention of passion. The decline is unfounded and downright socialist. It is the American way to desire more and outwardly live an insatiable desire for life. Time is the one commodity unable to replace and foolish to negotiate, and I am deeply troubled with the decline. And so must begin the vagabond furlough. Perhaps the life of a tramp in satirical fashion is what is necessary to make the keys clack for a good reason. Perhaps with things so tidy and organized in California, there is nothing outrageous to observe and wonder, or any zany obstacles to offer new life realizations. I want what I love to have purpose. I do not wish to mechanically love just anything and allow myself to spin monotonously. My daydreams and my expressions, my creation with passion are all on the decline. It would only sadden me if I did not care. Noticing and concerning are steps to ensure the seasons of change soften into the next. I am all too aware of my senseless decline. It seems that only the dramatic are able to thrive and progress in the hassles of life. For them, their wonder is the child’s captivation in a theater -- blooming only in the most spellbinding of circumstances. Others are taking the plunge as well. Although only some of their thrusts are relatable in travel, many are spontaneously pulling triggers on all forms of impulsive personal advancements. Mine has become a peculiar way to reinvent ones own position, but my circumstances necessitate a blasé wander in order to fixate again on story and expression. The laptop my bindle and the likelihood of an actual can of beans, revamped are the rustic boxcars for the mile-high happy hours soaring towards a blank leave of absence. The spirit is heading towards a boom against the recession that was on the verge of depleting my senses. In the fight against your decline, I hope that you find the senseless and impulsive action that raises the bar back to its proper setting. Pursuit of American excellence; the impulses entice while encouraging the old notion that something crazy might just be crazy enough to work. From here, I can only pack…

It Happened One Night at Pepe's

In the year of America’s bicentennial, President Gerald Ford was receding to newly elected Jimmy Carter, Steve Jobs gave birth to Apple, and the two-dollar bill was circulating for the first time with far out results, and a gunshot that ended in homicide was the catalyst that echoed a yearlong state of terror in New York City. One night, in Southern California, two brothers left their post at their family-owned Mexican restaurant in a Sunbelt of the retired citrus lands. The brothers found their success in the sixties and good fortune returned their nephews safely from Vietnam, but the year of 1976 could not secure their good fortune much longer. One night at Pepe’s Mexican Restaurant, the misfit staff of cooks and register jockeys found out what a keg of beer and a parking lot in summertime truly meant in the nineteen-seventies. It is an unexpected love story of carefree serendipity that became a word-of-mouth sensation for the rest of the year. The cover photo for this column has a date of several years later, but no one would ever need to know that. The palms and the building stand exactly as they did that one night -- a silent landmark commemorating a time in a generation that lived by its own infamy. As far as anyone there was concerned, the whole world was there that one night at Pepe’s. That dorky fat kid, who used to live down the street with his mom and dad, wore his favorite jeans and t-shirt and barely got his used Dodge out of the garage, but he made it all the way with The Bay City Rollers blaring on his speakers. In the parking lot, the kid let the music declare his spirit until his car battery died, and he discovered that everyone had finally seen him for the cool person he really was -- and he talked to just about every girl in his class that one night at Pepe’s. Long-distance friends in their thirties found the kid’s music to be the perfect backdrop to their reunion -- the reason for their summer. They were finally together, and they were both childishly eager to teach the fun-bratty youths of fast food the way you properly tap a keg. The couples’ misdemeanor behavior resulted in their dinning on stoner genius created by the kitchen that would never be on the menu again, and they were finally able to let go of their breath after holding it for far too long. Being ensconced in the high school atmosphere took them back to a time when they knew each other exactly as they did that one night at Pepe’s. A decision to take the band from prom up the coast to Seattle came to five best friends that night. The kind of decision you can only make over a keg of beer after your senior year with a crappy job in a burger shack. The boys took their vans back to their folks’ house and returned with all their instruments, using two parking spaces to remind everyone why they are soon to be gone -- and taking the summer with them. Unless you were using the lone battered payphone to inform others of the happenings, you were not making any calls. It was imperative that those missing or close to leaving work for the day knew of the potential in the night. The night held everyone to an unspoken obligation to keep the good times legendary and the right characters involved without attracting any outside elements that may ruin the most amazing, spontaneous and secret night of the year. The warm pink and peach sunset of an endless California summer gave way to the scraps of gusto held back by anyone -- a night forged without a concept of calendars. The overhead lights of the parking lot made a dim stage of the middle of the avenue and an eclectic ensemble performed for a night without status, league, or practicality. New friends made, troubles shelved, exciting decisions formed, and anyone who forgot about the possibility of realizing dreams found their memories again that one night at Pepe’s. The marvel of a cobwebbed accident that is by no means a calamity happens for no reason, other than to inspire the hopefulness that things can be different and beautiful at the same time. Only the greatest of changes and the biggest steps forward seem to be born on the most memorable of nights. Lives entangled in a social supernova that, without catastrophic incident, glowed with vivid life and burned out naturally of its own accord -- a social oddity as rare, and astonishing as a celestial one. There was not a single cop or firefighter or square figure of authority in sight that one night at Pepe’s. The brothers returned to a multitude of rumors and hearsay -- mostly exaggeration from the stuffy citizens of the neighborhood. The brothers found the cash register packed more than it had been in months and everything was surprisingly more orderly -- and nothing was going to shift interest away from that. Not a single thing, on photo or paper, can account for my stories or hold up in court, but I heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend that the summer of seventy-six was the stuff of summer legend. It was the all-too-real principle of what happens when yearning spirits accidentally come together in a cosmic force of carefree togetherness. I heard it all happened that one night at Pepe’s…

Midnight till One

It is four minutes until midnight; four minutes until the witching hour. A fabled journal entry found in an old stone church on the foggy shores of Northern California reads, “Midnight till one belongs to the dead. Good Lord deliver us.” The stroke of midnight is the ghoulish caress of anguish and trepidation for the dramatic and for all things darkly mystical. There are only the unproven accounts of those who claim to have witnessed the true darkness of midnight. Many have witnessed the hour slit through the outcome of a prison execution with all the lacerating ease of the Reaper’s scythe. Many others have prayed with tight white knuckles in the final heavy breaths before whispering the dread of midnight. The hour courts an unnatural stillness, the incense smoke dances to the orchestra conducted by the gentle wind. The stillness is broken only but suddenly and only for the flash of a moment. The speeding motorist ignoring residential courtesies. The passing motorist with frantic eyes and dirty hands. A motorist with miles behind them, desperate to put many more between they and the unquestionable scene left behind. The stillness resumes. The rain comes in waves. The sound of her breathing is the only sound over the splashing outside. Her exhales of rhythmic tranquility are a drug. The rain rests for the time being and the stillness resumes. It grows quieter, softer. Wet pellets drip in pattern and everything is dimmer, softer still. The approach of midnight. The hush. The first minute is the longest and there is no turning back from a purgatory of time. Her sudden startling and familiar sirens in the distance shatter fragile nerves, and somewhere close by the stroke of midnight has meant despair. The rain returns, gaining its confidence in the tension. The earlier sirens were not enough. Whatever despair occurred, more attention was necessary. Her unconscious disquieting was brief and unknown. The limbo is unflinching and the stillness resumes. Stray clouds lingering after the rain scatter the sky under the glowing stillness. Their movements occasionally muffle the light of the moon over the sleepiest of streets. A large dog barks at the unheard. The barking is fierce and adamant with such urgency that you listen. You listen for cautious footsteps to crush the wet autumn leaves. The unseen takes images in your mind, images of stories told of the darkest animals living among us. Deadbolts fasten and porch lights plummet along the sleepy street. In the silence, in the crisp chill dead of night it is the hour of the dead. Sweaty, horrid men who have made unholy deals sit in dimly lit rooms, stricken by the fear of imbursement. Smoking cigarettes end to end, they know the only price for the deeds committed is the one thing they are unwilling to pay. They will pay. The devastation of others harvests in time. When midnight to one belongs to the dead, all debts fair and proper will be collected fair and final. At the stroke of twelve, the dead and their blight in their hour of liberty find their all-too-late reprieve. Shattered by the hands of man, the darkest of unknowns has enabled the lost to collect in the most swift and unsuspecting of ways. The timid gentleman of yesterday’s high-society drops dead, alone and without witness. Those in the house recall of the hour with gooseflesh the bolt of a desperate shriek, then the thud of finality. His hands froze in twisted claws and his eyes the empty mirror of the terror of his final moments. His closest confidant takes to the grave the insistence that the death of his business partner was of supernatural consequence. The haunting of the past crawled slowly through time to take back what never belonged. The unspeakable details of arsenic and betrayal surrounding the secrets followed along to the grave. There is a train station a few blocks downtown. The rapid dinging of the track signals is a few minutes early. The routinely heard dinging sounds are no more a nuisance than the stampeding passenger train that will inevitably follow, trundling east towards San Bernardino with person or persons unknown. The midnight train is the last ride to sanctuary before venturing the witching hour in an abandoned downtown that favors in early closure. The rapid dinging of the east midnight train is the dinner bell for the citizens of the city beneath the city. The train is gone and its horn echoes from the darkness into obscurity. It is after midnight. The stranded of the station had better pull their coats up close and hold their breath tight. Midnight till one belongs to the dead. The hour has begun and the stillness resumes.

My Burbank Photo

I captured a photo in the late afternoon of a famous corner of Burbank, California on Riverside Drive. This corner of Burbank marks the unofficial dividing line between Burbank and the tiny studio village of Toluca Lake. It is a corner you have seen on television and screen, the more fitting of the numerous entryways to the media capital of the world. Unbeknownst to many of the tourists comparing their handprints with John Wayne just over the Cahuenga Pass, these are the gates to the real Hollywood. The first instant moment when viewing this photo is absorbing the vivid cheerfulness of the day, the optimistic ambiance on typical afternoons in beautiful Southern California. I spent the twilight of my teens, all of my twenties and the beginning of my thirties living in a very small radius surrounding the region in this photo. My childlike eagerness to capture this photo from the passenger seat of my friend’s car stemmed from a sort of irrational homesickness. My recent years have seen me living outside of my familiar radius; Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley, and so I become rather enthusiastic when my endeavors take me to Burbank. It is a genuine fondness for a city I consider my hometown. A historic all-night diner and a famous producer’s stage theatre serve as the gateposts entering west on Riverside. The buildings of the studios fail to provide much of a skyline, but it is in these buildings where the keepers of Hollywood keep a home address. The designing of film and television, as well as their promotion and marketing, is commencing all along this avenue, preferring the fans and tourists celebrate their fascination on the other side of the pass. Perfectly designed is the formula for small-town America and showbiz glitterati. It all begins here. Although, the reality is that anyone can slip off a freeway into various districts of Burbank, but the most welcoming of posts is the intersection of Riverside and Rose. The competing coffee shops produce stuttering streams of casual foot traffic. Smart women in smart outfits making accessories of lattes and please-do-not-look-at-me eyes. They are the finished product of once-Midwestern girls whose small pond importance found them a completely different person in the Pacific Ocean. The peppering of studios along the drive, shadow the pockets of peaceful and well-policed subdivisions. This postcard from Burbank hides the charming small town living among the nameless and sun-blinding structures producing your stories and idols. Thick trees line and shadow the sidewalks of side streets of preserved single-story bungalows and ranch houses. The citizens groups and city hall alumni are in a successful confederacy to preserve the vintage character of the older residential neighborhoods in the wake of sprouting mansions. A few droplets of modern Hollywood are trickling into the superb school districts, parks, quaint shops and dated communities that specialize in live television audiences. Taken in the middle of the week, this photo is simply another average bright reflection of the fun and laidback California. California, the rock show state. Where the lethargic should simply relocate and free up some of the overpriced spaces for those who wish to embalm themselves in a world where life is truly a stage. The calming blue skies are as immense as the images of carhops and rock and roll; exceedingly warm nights where you have a fifty-fifty chance of accidentally having a conversation with someone famous in the most natural and spontaneous of situations. The warmth of this photo carries most of the point intended of every postcard. Burbank, California. The gates are always open, although hours of operation may vary. And, so marks the long-winded captioning of my Burbank photo.

The Road Not Taken

I walked in on a conversation recently -- my whereabouts irrelevant -- and I heard an articulate middle-aged man talk of the road not taken. It was the very end of the conversation and the thoughts of his friends hung in midair. It was the tone with which he spoke that ignited a curiosity in me, and questions of whether that meant there was anything left unresolved in my own life. Every single one of us has come to a crucial moment at a crucial time in our lives where a major new life direction presented itself to us, and we had all the freedom and means to take it, but decided it was not worth the risk; too many dangers living in the trees alongside the road. So we decided, as unsure as we were, to take a different path instead. Boiling down to the argument of fate, I believe that everything happens for a reason; good or bad, and never questioning its practicality has recently bestowed upon me a queer sort of calm and serenity. I enjoy living in the moment, appreciating life day by day and little by little working towards success and happiness. I believe it is possible to embrace this baseless belief system and still be haunted by the echoes of the past. The echoes cry from a time before the belief system, a time when taking matters for granted was an often occurrence. It is wonderful when things in your life come full circle and they are far more beautiful now because of the time lapse and distance. Reforming those relationships or circumstances in a more positive and secure place solidifies the belief that everything truly meant to be will be when the time is right. The moment any seeds of wonder plant in your mind, the lingering of yesteryear will remain. Slight emotional itches until the closing of the circle or until you have found confidence, happiness and purpose in your present. Most circles in life never close. You take the alternate route and wish all those in the rearview well, then the construction of time builds over it and it becomes impractical to try to force its recovery after so long. It is a hard thing to be uncertain if you made the right decision then, especially when you feel lost in your present. Astray in your present, you cannot count on the circle coming to a close, even decades from now. The idea of fate is that all things are predetermined, but I feel that is only if you are making no conscious efforts to go against any grains. Inherently, our freewill throws many variables into the equation of fate, and accepting the responsibility of the willful choices progressively leads to the acceptance of responsibility to achieve reason and confidence in the present. Making your own luck is a beautiful and empowering thing, as well as a necessity when you have refused travel down all other paths. The roads you travel are your own, but the directions you decline must ultimately lead somewhere else, or to perpetually coast on an apathetic cruise control. To make use of your freewill and to go against the directions of fate stamps a certain responsibility to live excitedly and forge a path that happily makes up for the one you declined. These recent years have taught me that the only way to make up for unshakable regrets is to make them particularly relevant. To accept the past as something that will only come back to me if absolutely necessary, and to hold on to the values gained and the lessons learned since have given me strength to accept my past, bask in my present, and be ever wondering of my future. I, too, am guilty of remorse for the road not taken, and I owe it to myself not to allow the untaken road to be a symbol of regret. I have neglected to travel certain paths in life, for various reasons, and it has become my responsibility to make sure those reasons have a relevant purpose. I am fortunate enough to have notable memories of my past become beautiful realities once more in my present. This good fortune has inspired me to hold on to the belief that everything significant happens for a reason in its own time, but it has also opened my eyes to the chances we take. I have learned to be more aware of what I take for granted, and I have learned to ask myself if I am prepared to spend the rest of my life without it. The road not taken will always be a twinkle in the further parts of our minds, but it is the past. The road not taken will always serve as a source for unabated imagination on a long flight or in a rainy café. To find the obsession of yesteryear dominating your happiness is an indication that perhaps it is time to make some peace, create some luck and dare to imagine the possible roads ahead, resolving to take nothing for granted in the shortness of life. A cherished loved one of mine told me that “you always have a choice if only of attitude“, and that spoke to me deeply when I wrote this. I choose to have a good attitude and a stronger appreciation of life, doing my very best to take nothing for granted. In the end, I choose to make my own luck and I have no desire to take part in mourning for an unspoken past.

The House on West San Bernardino

In the middle of a high-traffic road on the fringes of modern suburbia is a vacant house with the literal signs of abandonment posted on a long thin slab of neglected property outside of its forbidding iron gates. Built in 1928 with a grandiose Spanish style, this $700,000 worth of real estate is attracting an assorted swarm of potential buyers and Sunday drivers. The empty abode is the star piece of scenery on one of my many walks and induces a series of daydreams that continue until my destination. I wonder of that first year in 1928, before the stock market crash made symbols of despair and suicide out of the Colorado Street Bridge in nearby Pasadena. That first year in a new house during the unknowing-tail-end of an era when the New York Times famously renowned that, “gin was the national drink, and sex the national obsession.” A home like this must have belonged to people or an individual of opulence and well-to-do standing. I imagine the situations of the possible occupants in that first year in a new home during the prohibition-jazz era, and their lives as suited for the home they inhabited. The overall first impression of the home is solitude, with all the comfort and amenities needed to exist in an expensive bubble. It has a neglected feeling of foreboding and sadness, but it also has the conflicting aura of mystery and danger. Its constant state of abandonment is testimony to the financial nightmare of its ownership, or to the world created once settled in. The home has four bedrooms and three bathrooms, suitable for the modern family of any decade. The one-bedroom guesthouse out back among the concrete courtyards, small pond, swimming pool, miniature streetlights and gazebos was ideal for the visiting in-laws and special guests of the family. The money was in citrus, earned the hardest of ways, and the family’s influence was apparent. The forbidding gates affirmed a family close and confidential in their endeavors, where appearances were of the utmost and the children’s dating circles were close and confining. Death or divorce came to one of the spouses, and as the children entered their thirties they remained at home, unwed and disgraceful, latched to their disreputable lifestyles and taking comfort in the knowledge that with each passing year they grow closer and closer to taking it all. They were no doubt a dysfunctional family with a secret. A dark and horrible secret binding them their whole lives until it could no longer stay buried, unraveling their world with such ferocity that absolute destruction of their bubble was their only fate. If a family endowed this home, the reasons for disappearing can only be gloomy ones. Sadder still is the simple possibility that the generation next in line came to tragedy in the Second World War, leaving only an era of broken dreams for a lonely two that carried on for a lifetime. Of course, there is the possibility of an ostentatious young newlywed couple with no children and no plans of ever slowing down long enough to have them. Budding stars of the studios -- behind the scenes -- their careers in make-believe granted them a lifestyle and a social circle that was as out of touch with the general populous as the house they purchased on a dizzy whim before they were married. An absolute whirlwind of a relationship; a relationship founded on reckless abandon and a style of nightlife that is best suited for envy than experience. Countless nights after two o’clock in the morning, alcohol-induced rages of jealousy, betrayal and hopeless insecurity shattered the rooms and hallways. The threats of suicide, always regarded as desperate melodrama, became sound to the mind after too many nights of crying and pleading to no one in an empty house. Her body discovered by friends in the bathroom of the closed-up, musty master bedroom. The litter of empty liquor bottles, overflowed ashtrays and broken home décor were all evidence of a devastated mind left alone for far too long. The news reached her disconnected husband in Ventura beach days later; a hotel clerk delivered the telegram. He always knew that the accusations of another woman were not completely unfounded, whether they could have been proven or not. His behavior and actions in the weeks leading up to her death was the catalyst that ruined him socially and within the studios. There was nothing more to do than dissolve into another life far away, haunted by the physical and emotional abandonment, and the selfishness of youth. The more traditional third scenario for stories in this setting is that of a solitary man, usually distant and mysterious, with strong financial means. I prefer the prospect of a lone woman in the age of late twenties or early thirties. She was a radiant blonde with sophisticated beauty, always dressing for her own style rather than for the sex of her race. A woman well educated, yet bubbly and warm, never married and rarely seen alone in the company of men in a dating sense. There was known facts about her distinguished education, but mystery remained surrounding the circumstances of her money. She was an artist of words and color, although not professionally as far as anyone knew. Her paintings subtly displayed throughout the common areas of her home and her manuscripts and poetry always nonchalantly scattered near reading chairs. Her home was always open to the community for holidays and regular parties during the summer. Her home became a source of social traffic although she never seemed to form a close relationship with anyone. She was never cold or distant, but it was obvious to those who knew her at all that she protected her heart and learned to be even more protective of her dreams. She never flirted with any woman’s husband, and her never-changing relationship status said that she was unwilling to give her time and romance to anyone who did not love her for who she really was at her core; an emotionally complicated and semi-undisclosed woman. At times, neighbors observed her hand delivering a letter to her postman -- never more than two at a time. They were letters of vibrant paper and exquisite cursive handwriting. There were fewer sightings of her and number of gatherings at her home during the thick of the January and February winter that came after that exciting summer of 1928. No one knew if she took ill or if the memories of the season took their turn in her emotions. The few sightings were usually of her making trips to her mailbox wearing large dark glasses, bundled up to her nose in a heavy, long black coat, her thick blonde hair lashing in the winds. The neighbors were hopeful and sad for her because they knew there was nothing. There was always nothing. Then one day she was gone. She had spoken of a trip once during the summer, when she was tipsy and laughing by her pool. No one could recall where she had spoken of. It was a place that held no familiarity in anyone’s mind. The general consensus was that she had taken that trip. Perhaps it was in search of her letters. When she left she never returned. Men with trucks came in her place, emptied the home and claimed to know nothing of where the boxes were going. She was gone and there the home remained, with lingering traces of sadness that are still evident to this day. Passing this home regularly, it being recently for sale and the Halloween season has made this home fun to imagine. To warp your thoughts to suit a holiday where it is okay to be scared, okay to explore the darker recesses of our imaginations. Built in 1928, and its last recorded renovation was in 1928. After pausing in time for so long this home has returned to the housing market, and for one million dollars you can own a secluded piece of California that has long grown past its intended golden age; for one million dollars you can try your luck against nearly a century of unrestrained nightmares. All of my rational faculties tell me not to get too excited about Gatsby moving into the neighborhood anytime soon, but the always-daydreaming side of me wants to imagine what scenario this era will be witnessing after escrow.

Free Write Monday

A favorite exercise of mine has always been free writing. A technique intended to warm up the writer, with the intention of revealing sudden raw, in-the-moment thoughts. It is almost a sort of therapy. The only rule is that there is continuous writing throughout without going back to make changes, usually resulting in a multitude of forward-moving directions with no regard for structure. I will admit, that vanity insists I run the spelling/grammar check before posting, but I am abiding by the rules of continuous motion and I am happy for doing so. The truth is I am completely out of practice. I have not been writing as much as I had in the past. I feel tapped out and uninspired. I will be happy to sit in my chair and prattle off anything at all, virtually venting in the process. This is not to say that I have anything in particular to vent. My life may be in a temporary limbo, but it is actually quite good. I am looking forward to the actual transition into fall. I wanted to write a piece on autumn, but eighty-degree, sunny days have done nothing to inspire my actual feelings of the fall season. The leaves may be falling and the air may be crisp in other parts of America, but here in Southern California, for the time being, the heat compliments the palm trees. However, a couple of Thursdays ago, I did get a glimpse of what is in store. It had rained parts of the day and rained a lot the night before; the skies were gray and moist with a weakened sun, and a tiny bit of crisp wind here and there. It was a hopeful night realizing that the city would be transitioning into a completely different vibe, as seasons do. I excitedly went out, stocked up on candles and incense and dragged all the comforters out of the closet. However, since that one evening, it has been hot and bright sunny every day. The way it is looking, it is going to continue being warm and sunny for quite some time. Mind you, I am not complaining. I consider myself incredibly lucky to be living in Southern California; I was simply fixed on the coming of a season toned with dreary melancholy, with undertones of physical and emotional inwardness. It sounds a little dark, but the very fabric of fall is life in a sort of suspended animation, our own development in a slow or dormant state. Nothing is thriving, but nothing is extinct either. It is in this state that a mellow fecundity blossoms before a rebirth of some kind -- significant or minor. I suppose I was all ready to be part of a season whose gray melancholy would coincide with my own mental and emotional quiescence. I am not implying that I am silently suffering in a depressive state, but I am approaching the turn of several new chapters in my life and I am definitely feeling the vibe of fall. I like the idea of sorting things out to the sound of rain, nestled in the shy California suburbs, always reluctant of the rain. There is something odd about someone who is not around socially during the summer, but there is nothing out of the ordinary about someone who seems to be contemplative and introverted during the fall and winter seasons. It has been an amazing summer, but this year I am not interested in the perpetual summer. I am ready to embrace any growths of maturity and am ready to find accomplishment and fulfillment within myself. I am eager to bundle up and change with the winds all for the better.

The American Riviera

From a shabby Amtrak Surfliner platform near the Burbank Airport, the early morning anticipation of a train ride to the central coast coupled with anxiety. The trip was the far-off results of a lot of loose talk regarding me moving north up the coast at the end of the year. My mother traveled across the country to accompany me on the day trip that had no specific theme or point of order. Long before the train pulled in to the station, I resigned myself to the circumstance that I was to become a tourist in my own state. I was to travel an hour and forty-five minutes by train with a backpack to join hordes of Europeans in a coastal getaway to Santa Barbara, to contemplate personal and physical reinvention among the palms and sands of the American Riviera. The lure of the Pacific pulled the train west away from the San Fernando Valley through stretches of horse ranches and desolate rocky hill terrain. The train eased into the coastline in Ventura, among harsh rocky shores around Pierpont Bay, drifting alongside beachfront running trails off the beaten path of encampments of recreational vehicles. Merging smoothly alongside one of the most famous coastal-view highways in the world, the high surf of the morning was inspiring the hopes of surfers staking claims along the sand. My train ticket awarded me an unassigned seat with a view of over twenty miles of coastal beauty and personal conversations regarding the directions and decisions facing me. I will always endorse a train ride to anywhere for a day when it is time to finally approach all the major decisions that will have the most bearing in your next chapter.

We arrived conveniently on the beach end of State Street, blocks away from Sterns Wharf. The sea air, the gentle sunshine and the cooling breeze greet you immediately and instinctively you gravitate towards the beach, regardless of what hubbub is occurring in any other direction. With my mother in tow, and with latte in hand, my unconscious wander towards the sailboats led to the Dolphin Fountain at the entrance of the wharf, at the lively intersection of State Street and Cabrillo Boulevard. Stearns Wharf, State Street, Historic La Arcada, Cabrillo Boulevard into Shoreline Drive, Point Conception Lighthouse, Santa Barbara Harbor, the Maritime Museum, the Historic Courthouse, the Historical Museum, the Botanic Garden, the Museum of Art, the Old Mission, the Bird Refuge, the vineyards and wineries and the beautiful beaches and marinas are always the conventional ways to tour Santa Barbara. The only real plan was to explore and discover Santa Barbara by accident. I was pleased with the chance instances I came upon popular points of interest when I did, and not to be doing it alone. Really, I was there in a general appreciation of my own back yard and on a clueless search for a particular vibe, an answer to a question I was not sure how to ask.

I had learned that I was thirteen days early for a festival I had never heard of. Epicure.SB was the upcoming thirty-one day festival running all throughout the month of October. It is a celebration of the area’s best cuisine, libations and cultural events with an estimated one-hundred various events. A city that embraces a month-long festival is the perfect residence for the true urbanite, and the premier destination for those who need a sudden and simplistic escape. I was not going to discover the authenticity of Epicure.SB this time around, but the thoughts of festivals and innovative dining experiences were enough to allow me to capture that romanticized feeling I had hoped I would find there. It was only an eight-hour day in Santa Barbara on an ordinary Thursday, but as I walked the wharf on that not-too-particular weekday in September, I was achieving a hopeful calm. A serenity of sorts splashed against the fears and walls in my mind to the rhythm of the tide washing against the poles, planks and barnacles of the pier below my feet. Escape in simplicity came easily to me. The sailboats and kayaks dancing in the glimmering water gave way to the notion that not all my idealizing was entirely inconceivable.

The smiling faces, the amorous handholding, the jovial posing for cameras and the knickknack shopping of the wharf pushed outwards back towards the retail of State Street and the courtyards of La Arcada through the conveyance of an economical and convenient trolley, accessible -- though not necessary -- at the entrance of Stearns Wharf. After a short distance, we randomly jumped ship around State Street and Figueroa, in what is essentially the heart of downtown, near the Museum of Art and the Historic Courthouse with a 360-degree city view from the clock tower. We would be sticking primarily with downtown and the waterfront; there was no sense in turning a slow-paced, contemplative day at the beach into a frantic rush to see the brochure sites all in an effort to post cookie-cutter photos on Facebook. We perused the glamorous shops and eateries of State Street and the magnificent live fish and turtle fountain of the courtyards. An area saturated with tourism, there was no feeling of urgency or any hectic vibrations, only attempts and successes of people attaining an excitingly romantic and alluring way of life in a famous place where most of the people encountered will reluctantly be saying goodbye.

With the sun preparing to move beyond the Pacific, we followed its lingering light back to the shores as the city adapted to the growing twilight with its own twinkling skyline. We recounted the day on a seaside restaurant patio with swordfish and crab cakes, taking inventory of the pink-peach-champagne-colored sunset and the nose-diving pelicans making last efforts for a meal before nightfall. We arrived at the train station in time to hear the news that we would be departing earlier than scheduled. Boarded and settled in the upper deck of the train, the brightly lit lights of the center aisle and the night sky made mirrors of the train windows, cementing the ideals of reflection and not looking backwards. I had found calm and focus, obscurity and dignity, aspiration and naivety, closeness and solitude all in one furlough to the American Riviera, whose flamboyant and inspiring shores I am sure to return.